Brewer's: Quarantine

(3 syl.). The forty days that a ship suspected of being infected with some contagious disorder is obliged to lie off port. (Italian, quarantina, forty; French, quarantaine.)

To perform quarantine
is to ride off port during the time of quarantine. (See Forty.)
Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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